The Actors: A Hwarhath Historical Romance h-8

by Eleanor Arnason

  "True enough," said Ahl. She went down to the cabin and found a knife. Leweli was nursing the baby, who was quiet now.

  "The Taig men are going to attack," Ahl said.

  "In which direction?" Leweli asked.

  "Shore."

  Leweli tilted her head, regarding the child. "A hard decision. I'm glad it's not one I have to make. But the party looked as if it might become ugly. Maybe it should be broken up."

  Ahl went back on deck, carrying the knife. The Taig sailors were clustered on the landward side of their ship. After a moment Ahl realized they were lowering a boat. "Quietly," said the captain to them. "Act with care."

  There was a soft splash as the boat hit water. The sailors climbed down and rowed away, their oars making almost no sound.

  The remaining sailors posted themselves along the rail, some watching the shore, while others kept an eye on the pirate vessel. A man said, "They'd be crazy to bring the ship in at night with the tide low, but they could send a boat. The captain says you're a woman. Why are you traveling in disguise?"

  Ahl said, "I can't tell the story now. Later, if we survive."

  After that they waited. The fire on the beach was burning low, and only a few figures remained around it. Most had wandered into darkness, though she could still hear them howling like sulin.

  Finally, when she began to wonder if the Taig boat had sunk, a shout came over the water: sharp and commanding. Not a drunken howl. A battle call.

  Men ran into the firelight, carrying weapons. The sailors around Ahl exhaled.

  "Hah! Taig!"

  Behind her Leweli said, "The baby's asleep at last. What's going on?"

  "The battle has begun," said Ahl.

  They were too far away to see anything clearly. Ahl longed for a

  looking-into-the-distance tube. Such things existed at this point in history, and she had seen them in the south. But the Taig ship didn't have one. The battle was small dark figures, meeting in dim light. There was more shouting,then a high shrill scream that did not end.

  One of the Taig sailors said, "Don't you think you ought to go below deck? It can't be good for a mother to see this kind of violence. Or any woman, for that matter."

  "Is that what's worrying your" asked Ahl.

  "Of course not," said another man. "We're worried about our kinsmen on shore.

  But there's nothing we can do about their situation. So my cousin here is taking the only action he is able to take. I have to say he's right. It's the reason our women don't travel. No mother -- or future mother -- should watch while men kill each other. It's bound to do something to the milk."

  "If not to the milk, to the mind," said a third man. "What kind of mothers are you two going to be after a trip like this one?

  Enough, thought Ahl. She and Leweli went down to the cabin. The porthole was open. She found she could see the beach. The fire had been scattered and was mostly out. She thought she could see motion, and there was still noise.

  Apparently the battle continued.

  "How could I be a worse mother by traveling than by staying home?" asked Leweli.

  "If I had stayed in Sorg, Dapple would have died."

  "Nothing men say about child-rearing is worth attention," Ahl said. "I wish I could see more clearly."

  Finally -- it must have been an ikun later--she heard noises on deck. The Taig sailors returning? Or a pirate boarding party? Leweli lay asleep. Ahl stood and pulled her knife.

  The noises continued, none of them loud. Surely this meant it was the Taig sailors. Ahl relaxed, then grew tense again as the cabin door opened. She'd forgotten to bar it. Too late!

  The actors entered, both unsteady. Perig's tunic was tom, and Cholkwa had a bandage wrapped around one arm.

  "That," said Perig as he settled on the floor, "was the worst evening of my life."

  "You, at least, didn't have Long Jehan in your hands," said Cholkwa. "Goddess!'

  He leaned against the open doorway. "Don't get comfortable. We're sleeping on deck."

  "Are you all right?" Perig asked the women.

  "Yes," said Leweli. "It was a fine performance."

  "Which part?" asked Cholkwa. "The lies Perig told about our history or the play itself or the way the two of us behaved with Jehan and Jehan?"

  "We didn't see the last," said Ahl.

  "Good," said Perig.

  "The play," said Leweli.

  "Wasted on louts," said Cholkwa. "Get up, old man."

  Perig groaned, stood and searched in his baggage until he found a tunic, faded but clean and untorn.

  "That will do," said Cholkwa. "You needn't look pretty. There's no one left to charm."

  "It's over?" asked Ahl.

  "There's still the pirate ship," said Cholkwa. "But the pirates on shore are prisoners or dead. Perig needs sleep. So do I."

  Then they were gone. She'd heard about the kind of mania that overcomes some men after battle. That must be what she'd just seen, unless it was the effect of halin and the tsin ears. Cholkwa, who had always seemed a bit sullen, had shone with happiness, so beautiful -- in spite of his rumpled fur -- that even a woman could see his beauty. Perig had seemed tired, nothing more. Maybe it was too soon for him to feel happiness. Maybe he'd done too much.

  That night she dozed rather than slept. Often she was awake, or in a strange state between sleep and waking. At dawn she went on deck. The Taig sailors were up, watching the pirate ship.

  "Leaving, I think," said the Taig captain.

  Sails billowed out, filling with wind. The anchor went up, water dripping from it and flashing in the first rays of the rising sun.

  "They've decided to abandon their kin," said one of the Taig sailors.

  "What do you expect of pirates?" said another sailor. The ship headed north and west, vanishing at last among the waves. When it was gone, the Taig captain said, "We need to spend another day here. I want the two of you -- the women -- to stay on board."

  "Why?" asked Ahl.

  "What we have to do on shore is not pleasant."

  Cremate their dead, Ahl thought, and kill the remaining pirates. Cremation did not bother her, though it took a primitive form in her era; but the cremation of Taig men belonged to Taig men. The other activity was male as well.

  "We'll stay on board," said Ahl.

  Perig and Cholkwa went with the Trig men. Ahl and Leweli went to the cabin. The day had a mild wind, enough to carry the pirate ship away, but not enough to bring fresh air through the porthole. The room seemed stifling to Ahl. The baby fretted. "She misses her potion," Leweli said. "But I'm not giving her any more, unless she becomes impossible."

  The baby became impossible and got more potion. "Just a little, to make her quiet."

  Ahl went through her baggage and repacked everything, made sure her knives were sharp, then went on deck.

  "Something has occurred to me," she said to a sailor. "If you build a fire for cremation, it may attract more pirates."

  "We thought of that," the sailor said. "We won't cremate our men until we're ready to leave. What the captain is doing now is questioning the pirates. When he's done, they'll be killed and buried. No reason to burn them. We don't intend to take their ashes home."

  "I haven't heard anything," Ahl said.

  "Our men went inland with the pirates. The captain didn't want to bother you.

  Sound carries well over water, especially on a day like this."

  There were dark shapes on the beach, laid in a line. The Taig dead, almost certainly. One man stood by them, leaning on a spear. No one else was visible. A bright hot day. The air barely moved. Bugs would be gathering around the Taig bodies. Not a pleasant job the watcher had.

  Would it be pleasanter to be inland, torturing the captive pirates?

  Ahl shook her head, thinking life was full of difficult choices.

  IN LATE AFTERNOON the sailors came back, Perig and Cholkwa with them. Ahl waited on the deck. Cholkwa looked sullen again, while Perig looked grim.

 
; "That's done," the older man said. "The Taig know how to reach the pirates'

  homes, though the pirates certainly did not want to give out the information."

  "Goddess," said Cholkwa.

  "They said they weren't going to harm you," Perig told Ahl. "They let you go, they said, though my impression at the time was they hadn't noticed your disappearance. Jehan and Jehan certainly seemed busy with other things. I don't remember anyone coming to tell them that you were gone, though I was occupied at

  the time."

  "You shouldn't talk about such things to women," said Cholkwa.

  "You did last night."

  "I was drunk."

  The sailors set to work on their repairs. Most looked grim, though a few seemed satisfied. The next day the ship was ready to go. They took it out of the harbor, anchoring where the pirate ship had been, then rowed back to burn their kinsmen.

  This was done at night. Looking through the porthole, Ahl saw the great red glare of the funeral fire. The air smelled of wood smoke and burning flesh. By morning the fire was out. No smoke rose into the cloudless sky. The Taig let out their sails, going west and south over an ocean dotted with foam.

  Once the island was gone from sight, the Taig captain called them all on deck.

  "I want to know the truth about you people. I've heard one story about you which is obviously untrue; and our cook says there's another story, which you told the pirates. Is there a third story? A fourth? A fifth?"

  Perig glanced at Ahl. "Tell him what you know," she said.

  Perig did, describing how he and Cholkwa and been stranded in the country of the Sorg. "Like a luat trapped in a too-shallow lagoon." Just when they reached desperation, the witch appeared and made her offer: money to go south, if they would escort two women in disguise. "It was wrong to do it, of course," Perig

  said. "But we had no alternative."

  The Taig captain glanced at Ahl. "Why did you need to flee your home, escorted by unrelated men? Surely this is shameful behavior."

  Ahl told her story: how the Sorg matrons had decided to kill five children in order to get out of a business contract. One child was left alive, the baby in the cabin. She and Leweli had decided to save it, advised by the witch who hired Perig and Cholkwa. "She said it was the right thing to do."

  "You've put us in a bad place," the captain said. "It's too late in the season to turn back and risk more storms. In addition, if I returned you to Sorg, the Helwar would be angry; and no one makes better ships than they. But if I take you to Helwar, as I intend to do, I'll make bad enemies among your kin. Why couldn't you let the child die? The crime --if it is a crime --would not be yours, but would belong to your mother and the other matriarchs. It's wrong to take on too much responsibility."

  "That may be," said Ahl. "But it's done."

  The cook, who had been listening said, "It's my belief that those of us who were taken prisoner would have died, except for the actors' cleverness. Now that I know they are not perverts and committers of incest, I can be grateful. Granted, it's odd for men to travel with unrelated women, but every man is supposed to help women in need of help; and healthy babies should not be killed, especially to escape from a business contract. Where will we be, if people don't keep the agreements they make? I don't intend to tie my mind into knots by trying to make sense of this situation. Go with the simple solution, kinsman! Thank these folk for their help, and deliver them to Helwar."

  "A good cook is always worth listening to," the captain said. "I will take your advice."

  The ship continued west and south, carried by a mild and steady wind. Leweli spent most of her time in the cabin, caring for the baby, who was often awake, now that she no longer got the potion. Without the witch's magic, the child proved as irritable as any ordinary baby.

  "And maybe more so," said Ahl to Perig while explaining why she spent most of her time on deck. "I'm willing to save the child from death and maybe ruin my own life by doing so; but I will not listen to her cry."

  Several days later, Ahl asked, "Did the tsin ears work the way you expected?"

  "Not entirely," Perig said. "If you peel them before cooking and cut off the base, they are an ordinary food, except for being unusually tasty. But if this isn't done, they cause visions, followed by stupor. In my home country diviners use them to look into the future. They wear headdresses in the shape of tsin

  ears." Perig glanced sideways and smiled. "Foreigners think the headdresses are funny; and maybe they are; but the visions are often useful, though only if the person involved has been trained."

  "Wasn't it dangerous to give something like that to pirates?"

  "The situation was dangerous already. The pirates were going to kill all of us,except possibly you and Leweli. It seemed like a good idea to try everything: the tsin ears, drama, sex -- if the pirates wanted sex, as they obviously did.

  Anything to distract them and delay the moment of killing. I thought if they began to see visions or fell into a stupor, maybe we could escape. Or maybe the Taig sailors would attack, or the Goddess reach down her hand and lift us all to

  safety. Who can say?" For a moment he was silent, looking out at the ocean. "If rd had the witch's potion, I would have used it. But it was on the ship. I used what was at hand."

  Ten days later a sailor vanished. The ship was searched. He wasn't found.

  Perig told Ahl about it. "They think he went overboard last night. He was one of the men held prisoner by the pirates, a young man, good looking."

  Odd, thought Ahl. She didn't remember a good looking man among the prisoners.

  "After they were drunk, several of the pirates approached him. He wanted nothing to do with them. It's not a good idea to say 'no' to a drunken pirate. For one thing, they won't listen."

  "He killed himself out of shame," Ahl said.

  "The Taig believe so, though it doesn't seem to me especially shameful to endure what can't be prevented. Maybe he thought he could have behaved in a more disciplined and undemonstrative fashion. Or maybe he wanted the memories of what had happened to stop. He should have waited. Most memories grow less sharp in

  time."

  It seemed wrong for a man to die on his way home, in good weather, after danger was past. Was what he had experienced so terrible? Hadn't the two actors gone through something similar and made jokes about it? She asked Perig about this, speaking carefully, since most men don't enjoy discussing sex or violence with women.

  Obviously Perig was under no obligation to answer her; no matter how indirectly she asked her question, it was rude. But he did reply, his tone courteous and more serious than usual.

  "Remember how Cholkwa and I make our living. Actors spend most of their time traveling. Any business that is carried on away from home is risky.

  "Remember also that no man can expect help in a foreign country. Especially, no man can expect help given freely. That is done for women and children, but a man is expected to pay in one way or another. Actors learn to do what is necessary; and we make jokes about these necessary actions. Why not?"

  She thought she understood what he was saying, and it fit with everything she'd heard about traveling players. They lived at the edge of morality. How could they feel shame in the same way as other men? After all, they sold strangers the right to stare at them and said the most intimate things, which ordinary men

  would reveal only to their closest relatives or friends, in loud voices in public.

  "Was the Taig youth right to die?" she asked. "Is that what a man of ordinary honor would do?"

  Perig glanced at her sideways. "One who isn't an actor? I think not, though it isn't my business to judge any of the Taig. He should have waited and spoken with his relatives. It's not a good idea to kill yourself without permission.

  Now his mother has lost a son and the men on this ship have lost a cousin. Did he have the right to deprive them of so much, because the world is not as safe and pleasant as he imagined?"

  A troubling conversation.
Ahl was no longer sure she could disentangle right from wrong. The threads seemed knotted together. When she pulled on a bright one, she found something dark, while the dark threads often led to something as bright as gold or silver.

  AHL PONDERED morality while the ship continued south. Looking around, she began to see evidence that land was near. Clouds like towers stood at the horizon; and there was an increase in the number of birds. Next came an island: a bald rockthat rose straight out of the ocean, useless to anyone except the birds. Another island followed, equally bare and sheer. Finally they passed a fishing boat,wallowing home with as many fish as it could carry. The Taig sailors shouted and waved message banners. The fishers replied with their own shouts and flags.

  "We'll be in harbor before dark," the Taig captain said.

  Soon after that Helwar came into view. Its forested peaks rose into a wreath of clouds; and mist lay in the upland valleys like handfuls of unspun wool. Off the north coast rain fell like a curtain made of gauze. Ahl's mind filled with happiness.

  One troubling idea remained. "I have a final question," she said to Perig, as they watched Helwar approach.

  "Surely you can stop asking questions now."

  "What broke apart your acting company?"

  He was silent for a moment. "That's my business."

  "It's obvious that you and Cholkwa have a secret," Ahl said. "I think I know what it is."

  "Do you?" he asked.

  "You have been lovers for a long time; everything about you suggests as much; and he's still young. It would surprise me if he's twenty-five."

  "You think I'm a child molester," said Perig.

  "Well," said Ahl. "I've met every other kind of criminal on this journey."

  "It hasn't been a lucky trip," Perig admitted.

  "How old was he when you met?"

  Perig turned, leaning his elbows on the rail and looking around to see who might be near. "What are you going to do with this idea!"